An integrated circuit or a circuit chip usually has a number of circuit components or devices. Some integrated circuits transfer data among the devices via an interconnect structure consisting of a single bus. The bus often has multiple conductive lines shared by the devices.
At some transfer speed, a conventional bus may need a large number of lines to efficiently handle a large volume of data transferred among the devices. The large number of lines may congest circuit wiring in the circuit chip and may increase aggregated line-to-line capacitance due to the necessity of using minimum metal pitches, thereby increasing power consumption and constricting bus performance. The large number of lines may also increase the size of the circuit chip leading to higher cost.
Further, some conventional circuit chips may have devices connected among each other via many different kinds of buses or different kinds of circuit connections. Thus, some conventional circuit chips lack modularity because many different structures may be needed to suit different kinds of circuit connections.
In addition, different kinds of circuit connections requirement may create design complexity and erase the option to reuse one kind of circuit connection to connect all or most of the devices in the circuit chip.
Moreover, different kinds of circuit connections may hamper the testability of the circuit chip because many different testing circuit models may be needed to test different circuit connections.